Some time ago, Tony started a "gig story" series. This one here is by Paul Emil Breitenfeld, AKA Paul Desmond. It's to be found, among other things in relation to Desmond, on http://www.puredesmond.ca/. It's a most humorous gig story written by the guy who thought he sounded "like a dry Martini". We can all do with a bit of humor these days, can't we ?
I've attached it as a PDF file.

Ok, all this talk about sticking, I thought I'd post something I think and get everyone's response.

I think to really play lines and play them spontaneously you need to totally have your alternate sticking down. That's the most important sticking there is. For me all this double stroke stuff is cool, but the ultimate fluid line comes out of mastering alternate sticking.

Just my opinion and the way I teach. Give me your takes on this.

I think if you master alternate sticking and alternate sticking on C maj, that then you can start switching things up.

finally had some time to set up the mikes ....

enjoy

Ofcourse we've done a few other things as well, such as adding a pickup system, powdercoating the tubes into black, and add a new black scratch resistant coating on the keybed.

It has a comfortable semi-wide pedal.

and gets its' stability ofcourse partly from the way we brace the frame.

The frame ofcourse is height adjustable.

We've restored and upgraded a great sounding M55 by among others putting it on our LW frame.
I hate to say, but this instrument turned out a killer instrument.
So much that we've decided to make this frame a standard M55 frame.

I started working on the Cherokee Etude. Here are the first 32 bars. I cheated a little bit, splicing in a couple sections and removing pauses. Eventually I will get it smoothed out.

My sticking is different from Tony's suggested sticking. I am exclusively using the inner mallets, always alternating, for the bass line and mallet 4 for the melody. I haven't tried the second half yet, so I don't know if I will be able to use the inner mallets, alternating as I do in the first half...

Barry

I was practicing some solo stuff yesterday night. Here's something that I recorded during my practice session.